


Liar Club

by Accidentallytechohazardous



Category: Bleach
Genre: Breaking and Entering, Burglary, Crimes & Criminals, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-26
Updated: 2014-07-26
Packaged: 2018-02-10 11:03:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,232
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2022723
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Accidentallytechohazardous/pseuds/Accidentallytechohazardous
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which two criminal masterminds find themselves at odds in a situation on the strange side, matching wits and skills. In the end, perhaps great minds think alike and an interesting sort of bond is formed. Do you believe in fate or in chaos?</p><p>Alternate title: In Which Shuuhei Hisagi, as a professional thief, begins to contemplate the idea that he may not actually be all that good at stealing things.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Liar Club

In the end, the act of a crime itself is hardly the most difficult part. A certain mindset helps, and once you have mastered that it’s simply a matter of going through the motions. If you take steps to clarify things, tear down the personalized wallpaper and family photos with your mind, simplify a home into a house and then from a house into a mark, thievery because remarkably more simple. A criminal mastermind must remove himself from the situation emotionally, think only of the prize. This, Shuuhei thinks, must be why so many petty criminals are adrenaline junkies. Most of them lack the focus and the drive to go pro.

 

From the windows of the manor, a warm, ember-like light casts shadows across the classical shapes of the buildings. From the outside, the place looks like a glowing, mystical gateway into some distant and romantic past. Because it’s considered more fashionable not to wait for valet and burn precious time than to do just that, Shuuhei doesn’t look too out of place striding up the elegant stone walkway. His dress-shoes clap against the cobblestone like the brief, important march of gunfire. He slides his thumb and his index finger over the edge of his suit jacket, straightening the delicate material. Trussed up like this, stomping along the literal path to a metaphorical heaven, Shuuhei feels powerful, as if he belongs here.

 

A costume is only as good as it’s actor, he’ll have you know.

 

Inside, the elegant shinto architecture is punctured by obtrusive examples of modernism, and Shuuhei has half a mind to call up the interior decorator and demand how he thinks he’s matching furniture from blatantly different periods. More than that, though, the sense quiet romanticism is more unsettled by the presence of the patrons.

 

An open-house is a watering hole for the rich and elite, fashionably dressed and working their own costumes. Shuuhei sees it in the clink of champagne glasses, the flutter of an eye that almost breaches the bubble of distance between him and the rest of the partygoers. A major part of the plan relies on Shuuhei’s ability to blend in better than the socialites’ ability to sniff out outsiders. Presenting his best disinterested, existentially disenchanted gaze, Shuuhei skulks against the walls in order to better play his role as the broody billionaire playboy who has grown too bored from playing with his parents’ money to enjoy anything.

 

(It’s almost too ironic that people like that made Shuuhei’s life hell for most of his childhood. Perhaps there’s a psychological factor in play in this whole criminal element thing as well. He’s not terribly bothered by that, as he never really claimed to be a Robin Hood in the first place. Once you add morals to doing bad things, it tends to drain all the fun out of it.)

 

The reason Shuuhei is here, however, is for greater purposes than just hypocritically analyzing the more fortunate. The scene has been set, but this is only dress rehearsal. The lead exits stage right.

 

You see, the one and truly good thing about an extravagant party like this is that it plays like a free backstage-pass. In the span of an hour and a half, Shuuhei manages to glide across the entire first floor from parlor to back kitchen under the premise of “just looking for the rest-room.” Nursing a glass of brandy cradled in his palm and wandering from room to room as if he’s a friend of the family and he’s been here hundreds of times, Shuuhei maps the place up and down. The security system (rudimentary. Inelegant but efficiently simple), the windows (sturdier. May prove to be an actual problem) and most importantly where one might hide all the valuables.

 

The steps creak under his shoes as Shuuhei creeps up the staircase, one hand on the rail and one hand still on his brandy, hardly any less empty than when he first received it. Since the lights went on, enough expensive alcohol had come and gone down participants gullets that the party has begun to adopt a more manic, hazy tone. The kind where the wrong slip of a tongue could cause stock markets to plummet, or a clumsy stumble in the wrong direction would bring forth a devastating scandal. Those who are powerful are most dangerous when they’re either restless or careless, and Shuuhei can’t afford to be anywhere near the spotlight when these people’s social lives get converted into mass media entertainment.

 

With one eye over his shoulder, Shuuhei breaks his own rule of not being noticed almost immediately as it occurs to him by feeling a small, light body slam into his like a brick wall.

 

The first moment Shuuhei catches of her, she’s a blur of raven and ivory, and only when she stops moving and he looks down at her properly does he capture a good look of her.

 

“Excuse me.” She says with a syrupy thick voice, with all the awareness of someone who knows the altercation is completely Shuuhei’s fault and she’s doing him a favor by apologizing first.

 

“My bad.” Shuuhei says back, with the same impassive but proper tone that his character requires. After all, he can bet that girls like this won’t talk to just anyone-

 

The woman taps a neatly (but not flashy) manicured nail against her clutch purse, tucked under her arm as if she’s constantly in a rush to be somewhere. She has the look of someone who always has irons in the fire, very beautiful and very clever. The pearl hair piece she has tucking her bangs behind her ear neatly also matched her beaded dress.

 

She adjusts her purse and looks Shuuhei up and down with a smile full of wisdom that exceeds her visible age, and a sort of cruelty that does just the same, and Shuuhei feels his heart sink. Plans like this are most vulnerable in the early stage, as soon as someone catches a scent of it, it’s time to scrap the whole project.

 

“You’ll have to forgive me, I was looking for the ladies’ room.” The woman says, which Shuuhei finds odd because he was just about to give a similar excuse. “I must have gotten turned around while looking. Perhaps you wouldn’t mind showing me back to the living room? My brother will be there waiting for me, and he’ll get awfully worried if he finds out I wandered off.”

 

Obstacles are certainly not unavoidable in his line of business, even of the unjustly frustrating variety. An errand like this will make it hard for Shuuhei to pretend he hasn’t memorized the lay-out of the house as well as he had.

 

Still, he helps relocate the young lady to her brother anyways. He is, after all, a thief as well as a gentleman.

 

\- -

 

Second attempt to navigate the second floor. Shuuhei’s footfalls are hushed under a plush carpeting that disguise the sounds of his movement like a silencer on a gunshot.

 

The doors are long, dark, old- but the brassy doorknobs are as spotless as if the house was being presented for sale. In some cases, this would simply be the result of an overzealously clean occupant who has their maids take extra care with the metals, but to someone who’s done their homework it’s a clear indicator that the family doesn’t actually spend much time in the house at all. Various parties and social events and illustrious vacations keep the home-owners busy and in the public eye. They’re scheduled to take a widely publicized cruise in just a few weeks. Fortune comes with hefty tolls, evidently.

 

Shuuhei meanders down the long hallway, with the patience of a man who has all the time in the world, even though the clock is ticking and soon the trickle of retreating party-goers will make his shenanigans all the more obvious. He figures he has maybe two hours to scan the entire second and third floor, cataloging where a well-to-do homeowner would hide the valuables, money, and financial information, before his clock runs out and his carriage turns back into a pumpkin. His fingers thoughtfully close on the first doorknob, feeling the weighty click of the tumbler as the door opens.

 

“Sir-”

 

Shuuhei has a sense that he may have jolted his body so hard that he dislocated a disk in his spine or several. He hadn’t even been aware that somebody was striding up behind him.

 

Turning around and phasing back into his inauspicious persona, Shuuhei comes face to alarmingly close as well as alarmingly high face of the person addressing him.

 

Very broad shoulders block Shuuhei’s passageway back to the staircase, belonging to a tall man who gazes down at him through tight, dark eyes. There’s a razorwire edge to his features, a nose ridge just a little too sharp and the corners of his smile just a little too crooked to be considered handsome. For a moment, Shuuhei fears for the safety of his mission.

 

The tall man shifts the object in his hand; a silver platter, upon which are several precariously balanced glasses of red wine, silently swirling against the delicate crystal of their confines. Shuuhei then notices the tall man is decked out in a plain black vest over a dress shirt, though definitely not one as nice as the one Shuuhei himself is wearing. A work shirt. He has a black bandana over his brow like he works in the kitchen. Just a caterer. Shuuhei exhales.

 

“Cabernet, sir?” The caterer offers, giving Shuuhei a tilted nod that he feels like he’s supposed to understand somehow. But Shuuhei is one hundred percent positive he’s never seen this man before. He would surely recognize a man who looked like this, had vibrant red hair at the length to which it had to be tied back into a braid like that.

 

Shuuhei stares for half a second more, a tad annoyed to run into yet another distraction, but that was just as much a part of his character to handle such interactions fluidly. He held up his brandy glass, still half full, and smiled as politely as he could manage between his air of disinterest and his rising irritation. “No, thank you. I’m fine right now.”

 

He’s ready to turn back to the door when the caterer addresses him again. “I highly recommend the Cabernet, sir. It’s a house favorite. Might do you some good, take yer mind off things.” The tall man says, with a thick, sharp twang to his voice that makes Shuuhei think of dark inner-city alleys or the slurring of split lips and missing teeth

 

Shuuhei smiles again, more strained as he feels his composure wear thin. There’s a rabbit-thump beating in his heart that he recognizes as his instincts trying to warn him. “I really think I’m okay for now.”

 

The tall man grins, lips peeling over long, sharp incisors. Shuuhei thinks he sees a beginning of a tattoo running down the man’s neck, like you would see on a thug or a gang member. The tall man glides around Shuuhei, moving smoothly from one end of the hallway to the other until he’s blocking off the entire second floor.

 

“I really gotta insist.” He steps forward, crouching slightly to loom over Shuuhei like a wild animal pawing at it’s prey. Shuuhei’s heels scuffle backwards slowly, his placid mask of disinterest beginning to rot away into a mean scowl.

 

It’s at that point Shuuhei realizes he’s backing off, having no choice but to put space between himself and the suspicious stranger. As quick as he can without breaking eye contact with the beady pupils of the supposed caterer, Shuuhei throws a glance over his shoulder. If he can just navigate his way down the staircase…

 

“Here.” The tall man pushes the platter into Shuuhei’s hands, Shuuhei himself being too alarmed and too jumpy and too started by the (presumably very valuable) crystal wine glasses toppling over and sloshing red wine all over his suit not to grip it. “Knock yerself out.”

 

And with that, the tall man gives Shuuhei a rough, full-body shove down the staircase.

 

\- -

 

The best laid plans of mice and men.

 

Shuuhei grits his teeth and straightens his stained suit jacket. The acidic smell of wine follows him like a drunk, which when paired with his slip down the staircase ended up being a very good excuse for security to eject him from the party.

 

That guy. That man who pushed him ruined Shuuhei’s only shot at getting a good look inside the house. Shuuhei’s only pair of dress shoes scuff against the cobblestone as he stomps away with his back to the orange light. The fall may have twisted an ankle, as well as sufficiently bruised his ribs (that asshole) but nothing he can’t fortunately recover from in time to stay on schedule.

 

He has the information that he needs.

 

\- -

 

A week after the party, and the once busy and blustering house is as silent as the grave. It’s the middle of the night, a heavy shadow of rainclouds thickening the eerie darkness that swallows the town whole.

 

Shuuhei tugs his jacket closer to his body, rain making his clothes stick to his skin and soaking him until he’s well-chilled to the bone. Even with his hair flattened in his eyes, the ground and the lawn and even his own gloves made hazardously slippery and cold, there’s no way the plan could go wrong.

 

The door takes a few good solid kicks, the underside of his boot meeting the hinges in a slam like a thunderclap before the it goes down. The hinges rattle furiously as they are ripped off of the threshold. Shuuhei sidesteps the door callously, the copper and wire entrails of a decimated security system clutched tightly in his palm.

 

He wastes no time. Not now. He has maybe until dawn to gut this house of its value and get far, far away from anything that might connect him to it. That includes potential eyewitnesses- Shuuhei has a rather ‘distinctive’ appearance after all.

 

The bag on Shuuhei’s shoulder soon grows heavy with stolen goods. Nothing breakable, everything worth a nice payoff. And the best part is that unless you lived here, you probably wouldn’t be able to tell anything was missing in the first place. It’s not like anybody really needs that much expensive and ultimately useless crap anyways, right?

Finished with the first floor, Shuuhei notes that the stairs make the same creaking sound under his heels as he climbs them. His car is only a few blocks away. Shuuhei is chastising himself for ever getting concerned in the first place when he hears a footstep that isn’t is.

 

It sounds more like a ‘clomp’ than a ‘stomp’, like a huge, heavy boot. It’s followed by the smashing of glass, startling Shuuhei enough to make him duck and cling to the walls to avoid being seen.

 

Anger sears in Shuuhei’s gut. Of fucking course someone else had to be here. It wasn’t enough that none of his usual contacts were kept carefully out of the loop, not a single soul knowing where or when his next mark was gonna be. But walking in on someone else’s robbery? This is a new low.

 

There’s a full bottle of wine in his bag. Shuuhei slides it out, fingers gripping it’s neck like a club and tells himself he’s well-prepared to smash it into a skull. (He doesn’t remember how that episode of Mythbusters ends, but he’s willing to bet it’ll hurt like hell.)

 

The door is open, and he sees the figure rummaging around on the floor. The carpet covers Shuuhei’s tracks until he’s in the doorway.

 

If Shuuhei’s life was more like an action movie instead of him just consistently doing bad things, it would feel more appropriate to make a snappy one-liner at this point. In fact, Shuuhei has about five different vaguely Bourne-esque comments on the tip of his tongue when he bares the wine bottle and says “Hey.”

 

The figure starts and stands, and at full height and face-to-face, Shuuhei internally laughs at himself for having the kind of luck that got him into this situation. Talk about some uncanny timing though.

 

“Well,” The (supposed) caterer from the open house says, hands raised in front of his chest cautiously. “This is just embarrassing for the both of us.”

 

“Get on the floor.” Shuuhei says, eyes already on the bag half-full at the man’s feet.

 

The other makes no effort to move, which is in Shuuhei’s mind just rude among other things. “How’d you get in?”

 

“Door.” Shuuhei’s brow raises curiously. “You didn’t hear me kick it in?”

 

“Nah. Broke a window in the back.” The man shrugs, as if this is something completely normal to discuss. That makes sense, though. He must have come in after Shuuhei broke the door down, then gone up to the second floor while Shuuhei was still cleaning out the kitchen.

 

Man, fuck these quiet-ass carpets.

 

In such an absurd situation, Shuuhei really can’t find it in himself to be angry. Still, having another person see him here, equal in criminal intent or no, changes things up. “Get down on the floor, hands behind your head. We don’t need any trouble here.”

 

The man snorts, feral grin looking unnaturally bright in the darkness. “What are you, my corrections officer?”

 

Shuuhei’s eyes narrow. Impatience bites at his temper. “Don’t make me hurt you.”

 

“Yer a funny guy. I like that.” The man shifts his weight on his feet, hands folded behind his back modestly. Like a taunt. “But you’re not the one who should be saying that.”

 

This statement is followed by a resounding click. Now that’s just not classy at all, bringing a gun to a burglary. In Shuuhei’s mind, that takes out half the fun. But then again, Shuuhei is a notably strange individual and breaks into people’s houses for a living, so his opinion on what is and isn’t appropriate may be admittedly skewed.

 

There’s a second of quiet standoff, Shuuhei’s scowl matched against the intruder’s challenging smirk, because with the odds as they were Shuuhei sadly has little hope of winning this fight. His insurance most certainly doesn’t cover “shot while breaking and entering”.

 

And then all Hell breaks loose, starting with the unsettling interruption of a car engine rolling closer and closer in a direction that Shuuhei knows with distressing prophecy has to be the driveway.

 

The man’s face goes a pale that looks sickened in the darkness, and Shuuhei has a notion that his face may look exactly the same. And he also has a notion that they’re both thinking about exactly the same thing- the door that Shuuhei kicked in.

 

It makes no sense. The family was supposed to be on vacation for the whole week. Shuuhei doesn’t know what would possess them to come back and he doesn’t care, but he’ll have a lot more time to ponder it when he’s far, far away from this place and definitely not in jail.

 

Both thieves look towards the window at the same time. Their shoulders collide in a mad rush to squeeze through the window frame.

 

\- -

 

There may come a time in everyone’s adult life where fate plays an odd game. It seems as if the universe might perhaps actually be inclined to set the stage in order for a certain event to take place, and those involved are helpless to avoid it. Certain things are just meant to be.

Alternatively, one may begin to see that the world is not so organized. That the universe obliges based on chaos instead of a wise, all-knowing sentient force. Events, at any time and at any place, are completely random or, worse still, are always products of our own vices that come back to affect us in a complementary manner to how we acted to cause them. But whether you believe in the theory of fate or in chaos, certain things are just going to fly out of the blue and have a significant impact on your life, which is scary enough to ponder on it’s own.

 

Shuuhei doesn’t know if it was fate or coincidence or even a moment of his own stupidity that made him forget to refill his car’s gas tank. He really doesn’t know.

 

He doesn’t know if he’s just really lucky that the tall man happened to have cash on him either. Shuuhei’s life is strange and uncanny.

 

“My name is Renji.” The man says, sitting on the hood of Shuuhei’s car as Shuuhei comes out of the twenty-four hour gas station with a receipt and fully prepared to pull the ancient gas pump out of it’s obscenely rust hook because that, friends, is the kind of determination that keeps you from going to prison.

 

“Is that a fake name?” Shuuhei says, clearly unimpressed, and clenched his fist as he fights with the hook.

 

“You’re not very trusting, are you?” Renji scoffs and turns away, like he’s offended that Shuuhei would be dubious under these circumstances. “I’m just sayin’ because it doesn’t sound real fair that you don’t know my name when I know yours, Shuuhei.”

 

Shuuhei pauses, looking over his shoulder and trying to temper his outward signs of bewilderment. “And how exactly do you know that?”

 

“Well, for one thing, I’m smarter than you.” He answers boldy. “Also this.” Renji pulls a small, rectangular object out of his jacket pocket-

 

“Is that my wallet?!”

 

“You sound like you already know the answer to that.”

 

Shuuhei yanks the wallet out of Renji’s hand and stuffs it into his pants pocket, seething loudly. Renji, for his part, just folds his arms and fixes Shuuhei with the kind of look that would be more appropriate on a child being forced to share a toy. “Well if ya’ don’t want people sneaking through your stuff, don’t just leave it out.”

 

“I didn’t leave it out! It was in the glove compartment, you just went through my stuff.” Shuuhei rams the nozzle into the gas tank, shooting Renji with a vicious glare. “Like hell would I bring my wallet when I was doing something illegal. That’d just be stupid. I can’t believe after I gave you a ride, you ungrateful-”

“I wasn’t gonna steal it!” Renji protests, still pouting. “And you’re using my money, so maybe I’m not the one who should be grateful.”

 

“You probably stole that money, too. Unless you made it from your ‘catering gig’.” Shuuhei’s voice drips with sarcasm so heavy he swears he could physically feel it pooling at his feet.

 

“Please.” Renji unfolds his arms and puts them behind his head, stretching his neck like a cat does before taking a nap. “Like any upscale business would be hirin’ a guy that looks like me.”

 

Shuuhei has to admit, he has a point there.

 

“Long story short I just stole a vest and got into a truck. Once you’re ‘the help’ you might as well be invisible. It’s a great cover. But not for you, yeah? That’s a good way to get caught, or at least distracted long enough to buy someone else time.” Renji challenges with a toothy grin.

 

Shuuhei’s mind flashes back to the woman who almost ran him over on the stairs. “You had somebody on the inside.”

 

“Give the man a prize.”

 

Something else occurs to Shuuhei- that this is all wrong. It’s too personal and by extension too surreal, because Shuuhei doesn’t “share” inside tips with anyone. There is an unnatural connection where he should be looking to dump this guy at the next opportunity available.

 

At the same time, it’s hard not to feel a kind of familiarity with someone who planned an almost mirror version of the same heist as you. That probably says something about the two of them.

 

Perhaps this is what they call “bonding?”

 

Shuuhei turns around. He appraises Renji with a hesitant kind of curiosity. “Why are you telling me this?”

 

Shuuhei gets a full-fledged smile from the redhead for his effort. He might almost believe it was sincere. “Because I’m a people person. Frankly, I like working alongside people better than trying to pull shit off like this on my own. It makes for a higher success rate, and more payoff to go around.”

 

“So what? You want to team up?” Shuuhei asks incredulously. No one’s ever asked him to be a partner before. He figures its the lone wolf vibes he gives off, you know.

 

Renji rolls his eyes. “Like it’d kill ya’ to actually consider. Hold on.”

 

He slides off the hood and ducks his head into the passenger side of the car. Shuuhei immediately bristles “I told you to stop going through my stuff!”

 

Renji resurfaces with a sharpie from Shuuhei’s cup-holder. He makes a grab for Shuuhei’s wrist, turning it so the palm is facing up. His hands are warm. warmer than Shuuhei would think a thief’s could even be. His fingers are rough and callous, aged by work. They dwarf Shuuhei’s bonier, knobbier hand.

 

The felt tip of the sharp skids across Shuuhei’s skin, and when Renji let’s go it’s apparent that there is a phone number written on his hand.

 

“At the risk of soundin’ cliche- call me next time you wanna steal shit.”


End file.
